“I have all day.” Shirley gave a little skip of excitement. “Do you have to be back soon?”
“No.” The wind caused Lily’s skirt to flap against her shins. She suspected it would be freezing out by Ocean Beach, but there was a franticness to Shirley that told her she had made up her mind, and Lily knew there was no use arguing.
They took the B-Geary streetcar all the way to the end of the line, rolling through the Western Addition and past Fillmore and across the wide lanes of Divisadero. In the Richmond District, the avenues began their orderly march to the Pacific, each block lined with nearly identical houses painted in pastel shades or covered in cream-colored stucco. The farther west they went, the more space each house claimed. At first they’d been shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors, but eventually small plots of land began to separate them, so that each house was granted its own driveway and tiny bit of lawn. Out here the marine layer hadn’t yet burned off, and clouds of mist drifted over the streets, phantomlike, as they were pushed about by the wind.
Shirley had brought a cloth bag with her, and she opened it on her lap to show Lily its contents: a takeout box from the Eastern Pearl containing chue yuk paau* and faat ko,* a couple of apples, and a paper sack of fortune cookies. Shirley pulled one out and cracked it open. The message, printed on a tiny slip of white paper, read, You will be prosperous and lucky. Shirley made a face and broke the cookie into pieces, offering some to Lily.
Lily took a piece and popped it into her mouth, crunching on the slightly sweet fragment. As they passed Twentieth Avenue, she said, “My mother wants to move out here.”
Shirley had tied a green-and-pink-patterned scarf over her hair, and it was dimly reflected in the window. “Do you think you will?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think my father wants to move so far from the hospital.”
Shirley didn’t respond. She seemed pensive, her earlier excitement extinguished, and Lily wondered what she was thinking. They hadn’t talked—really talked—in so long; she was a little afraid that she no longer knew how to talk to Shirley. Avenue after avenue went by; they were at Thirtieth, and Thirty-Fifth, and soon they would have to get out and walk the rest of the way.
“I don’t think my parents will ever move out of Chinatown,” Shirley said at last. “They can’t.” There was a tension in her voice, as if she were holding something back.
“Sure they could. Maybe they don’t want to.”
“What are they going to do? Open a restaurant out here?” Shirley was dismissive.
“They could still keep the Pearl open, and just live out here.”
“No. It’s too expensive. They can’t afford it.” Shirley looked at Lily. “Your parents could though. Why don’t they?”
Lily was taken aback. Shirley’s tone was almost accusatory. “I don’t know.”
“They could get out of Chinatown. I don’t know why they don’t.” Shirley turned to look out the window, but from the expression on her face, Lily knew her friend wasn’t enjoying the view at all.
* * *
—
Point Lobos Avenue descended in a dramatic curve from Forty-Eighth Avenue all the way to Cliff House, perched on the edge of the land, before it swept south toward the long stretch of Ocean Beach. Fog still shrouded the Pacific, but it was a Saturday, and cars already lined Point Lobos as Lily and Shirley trooped down the sidewalk into the wind, toward Sutro’s. The building rose up like a cinema just before Cliff House, with the word SUTRO’S standing in giant letters over the angled front overhang. Beneath it two windows flanked a row of glass doors, and over one of the windows a placard declared: IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN SUTRO’S . . . YOU HAVEN’T SEEN SAN FRANCISCO.
“It’s too foggy to see the Seal Rocks,” Lily said. They walked past the Sutro’s entrance to peer over the waist-high wall at the ocean, which crashed rhythmically against the jagged rocks along the shore.
“The fog will clear out,” Shirley said, but she sounded doubtful.
Down below, the glass-covered pavilions of the old Sutro Baths were visible through the mist like a faded photograph. A gust of wind nearly ripped off Shirley’s scarf, and she set down her lunch bag to tighten the scarf beneath her neck.
Ahead of them Cliff House was lit up through the fog, and Lily saw a family of four climb out of their Buick and head into the restaurant, the mother clutching her scarf over her hair just as Shirley was. As the doors closed behind them, the wind snuck up beneath Lily’s skirt, whirling it around her legs and causing her to shiver.